


Approximately Forever

by Laura



Category: Sports Night
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 06:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura/pseuds/Laura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Of course you think you've got Swine flu. <em>Of course</em> that's why you're calling me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Approximately Forever

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written months ago. Possibly even years ago. Set the summer of swine flu and death panels.
> 
> Thank you to Mollyamory, Angelgazing and Musesfool for the beta and all the encouragement.

"What's annoying about this is," Dan says by way of greeting, and then rethinks. "Well, what's _more_ annoying than the obvious fact of being woken up--and thanks for that, by the way--is that most people, when the phone rings at three in the morning, they panic, Casey. They assume the worst. I assume it's my best friend being a jackass. I'm tranquil, you might say. And one morning, I will be similarly tranquil, and it'll be, I dunno, Natalie phoning to tell me she's accidentally stabbed her assistant producer forty-seven times. I will be unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude; I won't be quick enough to help her evade capture, and she'll spend the rest of her life in jail. And it will, undoubtedly, all be your fault."

He wasn't sleeping, obviously, and there's no way Casey doesn't know that now. What's important, though, is that Casey _didn't_ know that until thirty seconds ago, just like he hasn't known it any of the other inexplicable times he's called over the last month or so. Recompense must be paid, preferably in the form of Casey agreeing to bow to Dan's every whim until Dan gets bored, or, at the very least, in a series of abject apologies. But since it's Casey, he gets neither. 

"Danny," Casey says, like he hasn't spoken in four centuries, "I think I'm dying." Which is highly unlikely, in the first instance, and really just rude, in the second. It's not like Dan didn't just make any number of perfectly excellent points that deserve to be refuted before the conversation can be moved along.

"Make sure it's in writing that I get the Barry Bonds baseball before you go," Dan says, and he hopes it's clear from the tone of his voice that Casey is so ridiculous, he's even managed to transcend the eyeroll.

But if he's successful, Casey certainly isn't fazed by it. "I'm not kidding. And also? There's no way Natalie would call you if she were in trouble with the law, you freak. Dana's gotta be your bet there. She'd should've been my bet now, but _dying_ , Danny. My mind is not as it should be."

To be fair, the longer he talks, the more Casey does sound like somebody's scraped out some important parts of his throat, very possibly with a toothpick, or something equally tortuous. Dan hangs up anyway.

He drops the cell back on the nightstand, and sprawls out across the bed, attention back on the laptop, waiting to see which comes first--getting to the end of the article he's reading, or Casey calling again. He isn't really fussed which one it is, but he isn't surprised to find himself reaching for the phone before he's finished reading more then a couple of paragraphs. This time, he doesn't say anything.

He doesn't have to. Casey's already talking by the time he gets the cell against his ear. "--me back. Seriously," he's saying. "Dying. And you hang up on me."

Dan leans back and stretches, digs his toes into the mattress and sighs. "If you die, I'm gonna feel real bad about that, it's true. I gotta tell you, though, I'm not overly worried."

"That's because you're a terrible person. You substantially reduce the quota of good in the human race." There's more, Dan can tell, but it gets derailed by coughing, which, again, in the interest of fairness, sounds pretty horrendous.

"That was really sexy, Case," Dan tells him, when it's subsided. "I'm not kidding. You should give up this editing thing and move into the chatline business."

"Shut up," Casey says, and now he just sounds very, very miserable.

"Okay," Dan says. "I'm extremely sorry I hung up on you." He can ignore overly dramatic Casey, and sulky Casey, and ablaze with self-righteous anger Casey. But pitiful Casey somehow still sneaks by him. Something to do, maybe, with how Dan doesn't think Casey knows he has that power, something to do with the lost little kid note in his voice he'd deny unto death if Dan ever told him about it. "Take some pills, go to sleep. You'll be fine. You've got a--" He's about to say cold, when the alarm bells start going off in the back of his mind, and what would've been clear but for the time of day finally clicks. He laughs. He can't help it. "Of course you think you've got swine flu," he says. " _Of course_ that's why you're calling me."

Casey sniffs again, and it might even not be just for effect. "I could have swine flu."

"Certainly shouldn't rule it out," Dan says. "Unfortunately, I'm not scheduled to get my medical degree until tomorrow morning. Maybe call back in the afternoon. I should be done by around two." 

"Jackass," Casey says. There's a smile there; Dan can hear it. "You have to, you know, do things. Bring me things. Be my conduit to the outside world."

"Yeah, no. This, my friend, is exactly the kind of thing having a son is useful for." 

"He's got--away with his girlfriend."

Dan thinks about pointing out that Charlie's a good kid, and would probably come home to pay one last visit to his dying father, but, honestly, it's the middle of the night, and he can't be bothered, even for the satisfaction of riling Casey some more. Besides which, Casey's inability to form a sentence is mildly troubling. 

"If you promise never to call here again," he says, "I might think about having groceries delivered to you tomorrow."

"I promise never to call here again," Casey says. "Probably because I'll be dead."

"Whatever. Try to make it through until the afternoon. I've got a column to write first."

Dan hangs up again on another fit of coughing. He should turn the laptop off now, because he knows he's going to go first thing tomorrow, but he doesn't. He's got a file he's pretending doesn't exist, and a Harvard Journal of Psychology open, and sleep seems like a few lifetimes away, exactly like it has for the past three nights.

He stays up until it's nearly light outside, and even when he closes his eyes, he's outlining and planning and still trying to figure out whether he's got a story here he wants to write at all. Not that any of that matters. He knows he's getting up early and going to Casey. Whatever else has changed over the years, this one thing hasn't.

***

Dan's never forgiven Casey for leaving the city; it intimates a dark, dark well of moral vacuity that Dan simply cannot be comfortable with. Casey says the suburbs let him breathe, are full of the wide open spaces that his novel is undoubtedly one day going to flourish in, the kind of quiet that lets him think. But Dan loves the sprawling incongruity of his city, how it's the same every day and always completely different; he loves the rhythm of it, how it's got a pulse and a heartbeat all its own. Casey's forever providing half his sentences, editorializing and suggesting in Dan's head, but this is where his words come from, because his city keeps stories, gives them up to anyone who wants to find them, and Dan never gets tired of telling his to her.

It's mostly why he doesn't drive, even on days like today, when he'll be leaving the grinding traffic of the city behind him. In a car, he feels like he misses too much. It's been three years since he and Casey gave up _Sports Night_ , and he never realized how much time he spent indoors until he suddenly didn't have to. Now, he reads entire books sitting outside, and jogs in the evenings, and wanders down crowded sidewalks in the afternoons, just because he can. Today, he'll take a train to Casey's, maybe do a little writing, maybe not. Something he sees or hears might spark something in his head, and if it doesn't happen today, it might tomorrow. Or maybe three weeks from now. Or maybe not at all, and that's okay, too. There's always the possibility of it, magic that might happen from a half-heard conversation. 

Plus, there's the coffee. Even Casey cannot defend leaving the coffee, which is, undoubtedly, the most important thing in the world. Dan buys his from a place that has Explosions in the Sky as background music, at least for today, and the kind of leather chairs that make Dan want to nap just looking at them. Those things combined with the fact that it isn't a Starbucks would be reasons enough to keep coming back, but better ones are the bagels with cream cheese, and the woman who's already smiling at him as he walks through the door. She's got his coffee brewing and is stretching for the bagels when he reaches her, like maybe he's become Casey levels of predictable. It's definitely something to be worried or outraged over later, but it does provide a helpful reminder that a sick Casey is a Casey who won't eat anything but whatever might put him into a diabetic coma soonest.

"Not so fast, Sara Friedman," he says, in decidedly triumphant tones, and when he has her attention, "I'd also like a couple of those pan au chocolate things, and one of those lemon cupcakes." 

She raises her eyebrows, and picks out the biggest cupcake for him. "That much sugar, I have to figure they're not letting you on TV at all anymore. Which is a shame. Your tie didn't look _that_ bad on Sunday."

"My tie was majestic," he says. "And also, I was saying important things. You should have been paying attention to that."

"Nah." She pushes his food and cappuccino across the counter towards him, smiling brightly at him again. Used to be, that smile was all flirty and suggestive, and he liked that, too, but this is better. More permanent. "I watch you with the sound off."

He laughs as he pays and collects his stuff. "That's why you only own _two_ of your own stores. You'll never amount to anything," he says, and she, also pretty predictably, flips him off as he turns for the door.

She calls out as he's walking through it, "My place Saturday. Non-attendance will not be acceptable," and he waves vaguely back at her. Non-attendance is always unacceptable, and it's very rarely why he goes. Sara and Jo and Chris aren't his people, not the way that Dana and Natalie and Jeremy and Isaac and Casey are, but they're his friends, company he's good at being around most of the time. That it lessens the number of openly worried looks Dana and Isaac and Natalie and Jeremy and Casey throw his direction is also a nice bonus, and that Jo is a really very stupidly awesome editor, who knows when to let Dan run and when to rein him in, is a second. That she doesn't mind Dan cancelling their lunch meeting to go spend the day with his sick, whiny friend is yet another.

"You're going to be there for days, aren't you?" she asks when he calls from the train. There's a tone in her voice that suggests she isn't commenting on Casey's needy and demanding personality, as it rightfully deserves, so much as she's commenting on Dan.

Dan manfully ignores it. "Maybe," he says. "I can come back if--"

"You can write your column wherever you fucking want. You haven't missed a deadline yet, and I don't imagine you're going to start now." She closes a door, and the office sounds that almost always make up the backdrop to their work conversation disappear. "You know that's not why I wanted to meet you. You thought any more about the other thing?"

"Little bit," he says, which isn't exactly true. Since they last spoke, he's put together six pages of notes, and what might be the start of an outline, and an extensive list of names of people he'll want to talk to. 

"And?" she says, when he doesn't offer anything else.

Dan looks very hard at the Sudoku puzzle in front of him. He's pretty sure the back of his neck is going red; it's stupid to get nervous just talking about this, but there it is, anyway. "Don't know," he says. "It's, you know, a thing for me."

"Think about it some more," she says, unnecessarily. "You'd do a better job than anyone I can think of, Dan." 

"Yeah," he says. "That's kinda why I don't want to do it."

"Just think about it," she says again. "Maybe even try the novel concept of talking it over with someone else. Like, I dunno, your best friend." Then she hangs up.

Dan will certainly do at least one of those things, whether he wants to or not, but right now, he just wants to be a guy on a train, going somewhere that's a lot like home. So he calls Casey, instead. "My editor hates me," he says, when he gets only his voicemail. "I'll probably get fired for missing our lunch date. Getting fired from the New York Times is probably a big deal, right? If I do, it better turn out you're dead when I get there."

And then, just to be sure Casey isn't, he checks his Twitter. Realcmccall doesn't shed any light on the situation; the last time it was updated was yesterday afternoon, which is in itself a little worrying. Since Charlie introduced him to Twitter ("How was I to know what I'd unleash?" he always asks, which doesn't even seem unreasonable, given that Casey isn't normally known for brevity), Casey's become quite attached to the concept. Yesterday morning, for example, Dan learns that he had some particularly unkind words for the Mets, as well as a Rihanna song stuck in his head. He also loves his iPhone (another gift from Charlie), and would welcome suggestions for applications (written out in full) to make him more productive.

The most disturbing part about the whole thing is the number of responses he almost certainly got. There are apparently untold numbers of people who inexplicably find it useful to have a direct line to Casey's thoughts, whatever they are and whenever they occur. It's the kind of knowledge that makes Dan reconsider democracy, a fact he's pointed out to Casey many times. Casey always smiles and says some variation of, "You'd do it too, if you weren't afraid of the competition."

Dan invariably throws something at his head, misses and says, "I don't use the anonymous attention of strangers to validate my life, anymore." Which is kind of true. It's certainly as true for him as it's ever likely to be, and it's also certainly not why he doesn't do Twitter. That's a decision predicated entirely on the notion that the whole thing is ridiculous. He's resisted all Casey's attempts to make him get an account--at least, so far as Casey knows. 

He does have one, though, that Jeremy's sworn to secrecy about. When Dan knows Casey's particularly cranky about something ridiculous, or when he hasn't seen him in a while, or, sometimes, when he's just bored, he uses it to send him special messages, carefully designed to cause maximum irritation. Like that Notre Dame sucks more than the average black hole, or that if Obama's stimulus is so great, why doesn't Casey give away half his own money, too? Occasionally, just a serious of inoffensive messages, sprinkled with 'Between you and I,' or, 'including myself.' Those are really his favorites, because he _knows_ Casey won't comment on them publicly, for fear of looking like the crazy grammar pedant he is, but he also knows his forced silence just compounds the torture of knowing there are people in the world who say 'myself,' when they mean 'me.'

There's maybe a column in that--about Twitter, or crazy people, or how the education system is clearly failing, and how maybe Casey is responsible for all of it--and Dan's still toying with the idea an hour later when he gets out of a cab, and walks up Casey's neatly manicured lawn. Ordinarily, when the sky is this kind of perfect blue and it’s really starting to feel like summer, Casey would be sitting on his porch swing, drinking coffee and pretending to work. He'd grin at Dan, like he hasn't seen him in months, and those first thirty seconds would be a down payment on traveling a lot farther to get here. Today, though, there's no sign of him, and the curtains of all the front-facing windows are closed. Dan snags the mail from the box on his way past, absent-mindedly flicking through it in search of anything he can use against Casey later.

The door's locked when he reaches it, but Dan got his set of keys to the house even before Casey did, and he doesn't hesitate before letting himself in. The place is weirdly quiet--no TV or radio on in the background--and there's no smell of anything delicious cooking to welcome him. Dan checks the living room, just in case, and opens the blinds before heading upstairs, calling for Casey as he goes.

It's a little redundant, because it's not like Dan doesn't know exactly where he'll find him, or exactly _how_ he'll find him, either. And Casey is, as expected, in his pretty awesomely sized bedroom, in the middle of his pretty awesomely sized bed, surrounded by what must be every pillow he owns. He's almost entirely covered in blankets, only the top of his head sticking out. There are used tissues haphazardly strewn everywhere, and, kind of tragically, a depleted roll of toilet paper on the bed, obviously drafted in when the tissues ran out. There's a half-full glass of water on the nightstand, and an assortment of medications beside that. So far, so very much standard sick Casey procedure. Then he pokes his head out to look at Dan.

"Holy crap," Dan says, before he can help himself. "You look like so much shit." 

And Casey really, very definitely does. "I told you I was sick," he says--croaks, more like. He sounds a little bit like Yoda, if something had gone terribly wrong with Yoda’s voice, too.

"Yeah, but seriously," Dan says. "There are actual dead people with better complexions than you. I'm a little frightened."

"Again," Casey says. "This should not be news to you. If you weren't the kind of friend who was all unbelieving and…you know. Etc, etc." He waves his hand, very, very feebly.

If Casey could look smug, Dan knows, he would. As it is, he still just looks like hell. His eyes are red and puffy, and his nose could light up Times Square. All of which just serves to emphasize how extraordinarily, unnaturally pale the rest of his face is.

"Well, if I'd known you meant you were _actually_ sick, I wouldn't have come. Obviously."

Casey just flops his head back on his pillows, and looks at Dan with those terrifying eyes. Dan thinks he's trying to communicate despair. "I've thrown up 432 million times," he says, in confirmation. "I think one of those times, it might have been my liver I was losing. Also, I have a fever. Possibly dangerously high."

"I promise to call someone when I'm back on the train and have them check that out," Dan says. But he sets the food he brought and the mail on the dresser by the window, and then crosses to the bed. He lays the backs of his fingers against Casey's forehead. Casey turns into the touch, sighing miserably; he _does_ have a fever, but, in Dan's inexpert opinion, not, in fact, a dangerously high one.

"On the upside," Dan says, not taking his hand away, "if it is swine flu, you're not in a high risk category. I mean, you're rapidly approaching sixty-five, don't get me wrong, but you aren't there yet. And you definitely aren't a small child. You aren't pregnant, are you?"

Casey looks like he'd like to smile, if only he could remember how. He does some weird grimacing thing, instead, and says, "Isn't there some kind of rule about not making fun of your best friend when he's sick?" He turns his face away from Dan and buries it in the pillows, muttering what sounds like, "It's gotta be in the code somewhere."

"Dunno. Can't say I ever read it." He pulls a couple of the pillows from under Casey's head, ignoring his noise of protest, and settles himself on the bed beside him. It's probably far too late to save himself, anyway. "You do know I really don't have medical training, right? We are now in that most unusual of situations--the one in which I am of limited benefit."

Casey actually laughs a little, then coughs a lot. And then, as if to underline that Dan is now totally doomed, he rolls towards him, until his head's resting against his side. "Already called the people with the training," he mumbles against Dan's t-shirt. "They don't think I'm a high risk sufferer, either." It's possible he sounds a little affronted about that.

"You have to imagine my shock here." And then, softer, because he can feel Casey shivering against him, no matter that the room is almost uncomfortably warm, he says, "Okay. So." He drops a hand to Casey's shoulder and squeezes slightly, because Casey's insistence that they be manly men who don't touch has never been anything but talk. "What do you want me to do?"

"Hit me with a hammer until I fall into a coma--or die, if I'm really lucky." He pushes in a little closer. Dan settles his hand on his neck; he maybe smoothes Casey's hair, just a bit. This is obviously a moment they'll never be discussing again, except for when Dan tells Natalie and Dana all about how Casey made Dan give up a whole day just to pet his hair, like the tremendous wuss he is. "Just," he says. "I need ibuprofen and Gatorade and soup and other stuff later. But just--you know. Stay."

The last word gets a little lost in a monstrous sneeze that probably terrifies small animals four states over, and Casey still doesn't pull away, which is kind of gross. Dan doesn't, either, and that is a thing best not thought about too closely.

"Okay," he says. "Sure." He toes off his sneakers and swings his legs onto the bed. Casey lets him get comfortable, and then settles back in again, heavy and very, very warm against him. "You should try getting some sleep. Call it a practice run for the coma."

Casey mmms in response, like he's finally run out of the effort needed to do anything. Dan stays quiet, and it doesn't take long for Casey to fall asleep, whistling hilariously through his nose on every other breath that isn't a snore, and drooling extensively on Dan's side. Dan reaches for Casey's copy of _Cloud Atlas_ , and picks up where Casey left off. He's too warm, and forty minutes in, his leg's gone numb; his phone has buzzed three times and Casey's positioned himself perfectly so that Dan can't get to it; he's also kind of hungry now, and the food's all the way on the other side of the room. And still, he doesn't go anywhere.

"It's a good thing I'm at peace with my idiocy," Dan tells him, as he flips a page. "Otherwise, I'd be having some kind of crisis right about now." 

Beside him, Casey snores and drools and is pretty much the least attractive picture of anything ever. Dan smiles and goes on reading.

***

Hours later, he wakes up, confused and disoriented; it takes him a minute to remember that he's in Casey's bed and why he's there. When he opens his eyes, Casey's lying on his side facing him, perfectly still and quiet. There are hectic patches of feverish color in his face, and he's watching Dan like he's putting all the energy he has into it. 

"You look like a psycho," Dan says, because Casey kind of does. He cautiously straightens himself out of the contortions he'd worked himself into in his sleep, and reaches out to touch him. He's warmer than before, Dan's pretty sure of it, and in the light of the lamp by his bed, his eyes are a little muzzy. "You should have woken me."

Casey shrugs. "You looked tired. Probably because you were up until God knows when last night."

Dan ignores that, and looks at his watch. Nearly a quarter after ten. He reluctantly sits up, every muscle protesting how he's been lying for the last six hours, and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. "You want me to go to the store now? It's not like there won't be somewhere open."

"Nah." Casey reaches out and tugs him back down a little. "Don't need you to do that." Which is a little weird, because it's pretty much the reason he's here, but Dan feels like he could sleep for another twenty hours, too many nights without it finally catching up with him, and he doesn't argue.

He does get up and get Casey more water, eats his cupcake as a dinner substitute, and roots around in his cupboards until he finds a box of crackers. He takes that and some more ibuprofen back to Casey, hangs out while he drinks and eats at least some of it, because, like the ridiculous kid he is, he can't be trusted to actually do it by himself when he feels like this. Besides, when he gets up to go brush his teeth and do whatever in the bathroom, he doesn't look exactly steady on his feet. Dan leans back on the bed, head resting against the wall, and listens for the sound of him falling over. He doesn't mean to close his eyes, but he does, anyway; doesn't mean to drift off again, but he does that, too.

"You could just stay," Casey says, suddenly right beside him on the bed. "Not like you haven't already spent half the day here."

Dan's tempted. He's tired and a little out of it himself, and a miserable Casey is, by definition, a tactile Casey; he could stay and it wouldn't mean anything. Still, Dan's not that stupid, not really. Not anymore. He's gotten pretty good at accepting the things he can't have, but there's no need to push it by actually spending the night in Casey's bed, just because Casey's too sick and stupid right now to realize that's not what best friends do.

"I don't snuggle with sick people," he says, and levers himself up. "Remember to make a lot of noise if you're choking on your own vomit."

He goes to his own room once Casey's back under the blankets. He lets himself regret it a little bit, because that's a thing he's allowed to do now, courtesy of a heap of therapy and a lot of time, but it isn't paralyzing like it used to be. It's the kind of thing lifted by another stretch of good sleep, waking up the next morning and pretending to listen to Casey make lists of everything he's going to need from the store, as if Dan hasn't done this more times than he can count. Or by getting in Casey's car thirty minutes later and driving there, which he can do because he's been on Casey's insurance since he got it. That means something, something permanent and good, and letting himself believe that is another thing he's allowed to do now. He's not faking the smile on the way back, with the window down and Casey's copy of _Graceland_ filling up the silence. He presses his foot down against the floor, because he can let her out here like he never could in the city, and because he feels a little bad about not going yesterday.

The whole trip takes an hour and a half, tops. He dumps most of the stuff he bought in the kitchen, but the magazines and the tissues and the Gatorade he takes straight to Casey. "As your conduit to the outside world," he says, as he kicks open the door, "I'm pleased to announce that I found as many people as I could to infect with--" He trails off, because Casey's asleep again, clearly tired out by the morning's exertions of sitting up for more food. "Lazy bastard," he finishes, quieter than before. 

He leaves the Gatorade on the nightstand beside him, the magazines in a messy pile by his bed. Back in the kitchen, he puts the coffee on, and thinks pretty seriously about unpacking the rest of the groceries. He's reading the sports pages of the Washington Post and still thinking about it half an hour later when Isaac calls.

It's both a welcome distraction and entirely expected; Natalie and Jeremy called yesterday, Dana the day before. If he weren't here, he has no doubt Casey would be on call number four of the day. He knows it's stupid, and, more pertinently, _they_ know it's stupid, and yet, they keep doing it. Superstition, maybe, like they're keeping that second lightning strike at bay by being extra vigilant.

"That's excellent," Isaac says, when Dan tells him where he is. He sounds positively gleeful, like Casey being sick is the best thing that could possibly have happened. And then, to confirm, "Very good," as if maybe Casey got sick just so Dan would have to go spend time with him. The thought, in Isaac's defense, had crossed Dan's mind, but he rejected it almost instantly, on the grounds that Casey isn't that stealthy.

"It's certainly enriching my life in new and interesting ways." He gets himself a cup of coffee, and abandons the kitchen, in favor of crossing the living room and going outside. "How about you? Have you thought of a good pretext for calling me? The other day, Dana wanted to know if I could advise her on her taxes. Which, of course, as a person with no tax knowledge whatsoever, I could not. You don't want me to do your taxes for you, do you?"

Isaac's snort is very eloquent. "If I ever need you to offer me financial advice, I'll have to conclude that something has gone terribly awry in my life. I'm of course calling to make sure you're still playing with your full deck."

And there's really nothing Dan can do in response to that but laugh. "I want to thank you," he says, still laughing, "for the awesome way you just made me spit coffee all over myself. My phone also appreciates it." He wipes his cell with the sleeve of his shirt, because it's the closest thing to hand, and grins the whole time. Isaac's the easiest person to love Dan's ever known, and this is why. "And yes, far as I know, all fifty-two cards are present and accounted for. You, on the other hand, are all total nutjobs, you know that? And you know I'm qualified to judge."

"I know you've got a smart mouth and no respect for your elders, is what I know." Dan can't mistake the amusement in Isaac's voice, though. There's quiet on the line, the good kind, and Dan sits on the step and turns his face up to the sky. "You doing okay?" Isaac says after a moment. There's no mistaking the fondness there either; there never is. That's probably why he doesn't mind them all checking up on him like this every August, as if him going off the rails seven years ago was precipitated by extreme heat or a dislike of months with six letters in them, rather than the inevitable result of years of unresolved guilt and crazy. 

"I'm doing good, Isaac."

"Good boy." There's another few seconds of quiet, and then he adds, perfectly natural, like an extension of a conversation they've been having for a while, "I don't want you running my magazine when you aren't at your best."

Dan stops slumping against the doorjamb, sits up straight, phone pressed tighter against his ear. "You who with a what now?" It's not his most impressive sentence construction, maybe. 

"You heard what I said. You and Casey. I've been thinking about it. I've got money and connections. You've got youth and energy, and possibly even the potential to develop talent soon. It's a perfect combination."

"Like I said. Total nutjob." Dan likes the thought, though, always has. There are ideas he doesn't get to fit in a weekly column, stories that never make it to a magazine that half the world wants to write for. And he doesn't have to ask if Isaac's serious or not; he knows better than that. "Journalism isn't exactly where the money is, Isaac."

Isaac sighs, long and loud. "I'm not exactly saving for the next forty years, Daniel. Also, good journalism is gonna do just fine. And good journalism is a little thin on the ground these days, in case you hadn't noticed." 

Dan has noticed, and more than that, he knows the look that accompanies this tone of voice, the one with the raised eyebrows and the tiny smile at the corner of Isaac's mouth. It's the one that conveys how stupid Danny's argument is, and also that Isaac isn't fooled by it for a second. Dan never does well in the face of that look.

"It'd be a lot of work," he says, finally, and he's already smiling again. He doesn't ask, either, if Isaac's really up to it. That's another thing he knows better about. "And we'd need to do a lot of talking first. But I'll ask Casey about it." 

"Who do you think I got the idea from? Called me up a couple weeks ago. Had an awful lot to say on the subject."

"Casey did?" Dan asks. This continues to be far from his best display of conversational brilliance, but he can hardly be blamed for that. 

"That's what I said. He was pretty drunk at the time. But he was also pretty serious. I'm gonna pay him less than you, by the way, because you've never drunk dialed me in the middle of the night."

"Casey did that?" Dan asks again. It's always like this when Casey surprises him, because he never does it with the little things. "Casey drunk dialed you to convince you to--I don't know what you're doing, exactly, but something involving money. For a magazine we're going to run?"

"Casey did that, yes." Isaac doesn't sigh this time, but Dan can tell it takes an effort. "He said he was going to pitch it to you so you couldn't say no, but I'm an old man, Danny, and I know Casey. He could be years working up to it. Since you're already there, I might as well move things along."

"You certainly did that." 

"Good," Isaac says, sounding like he's smiling too. "Now get off my phone and go have a conversation like a normal person."

"You've always had upsetting control issues," Dan says. But he gets off the phone, at least. The conversation he puts off until he's unpacked the groceries, found places for them all in Casey's labyrinthian kitchen. Officially, he's buying himself time to let Casey wake up. Unofficially, and more accurately, he's buying himself time to get over being so hopeful he's a little scared of it.

But as it happens, there's no conversation to worry about. Casey's huddled in the bathroom, throwing up the little he's managed to eat. Dan goes straight in, ignoring the smell, which is pretty easy when he sees how pathetic and unhappy Casey is.

"Hey," he says. He puts a hand on Casey's back. Casey's shaking, and warm even through his t-shirt. "That looks pretty gross, for the record."

Casey just moans helplessly, and tries pretty hard to expel his insides. Dan stays where he is, rubbing circles on Casey's back in what he's sure is a very masculine way, and generally feeling pretty helpless himself, until Casey lifts his head from the toilet and collapses back against him, sweaty and shaking and in desperate need of mouthwash.

"You're so hot to me right now." Dan braces Casey with one arm, and moves around him to flush the toilet. "You going to fall over if we stand up?"

Casey shakes his head, and Dan pulls him to his feet. He keeps holding him while Casey washes his face and even brushes his teeth. Dan's not sure he'd be bothering with that in Casey's position, but he's certainly not objecting that Casey's OCD tendencies can't be defeated by horrific bouts of vomiting. He walks Casey back to his bed, taking most of Casey's weight as he goes.

"This is all just a very desperate plea for sympathy. Don't think I don't know that." He smoothes the covers up over him, keeps talking because Casey always likes the distraction whenever there's pain or even just tiredness in his life. "You're really just a ridiculous manchild. The kind you complain about in all those Judd Apatow films."

He gets a smile for that. "That's possibly the most offensive thing you've ever said to me." Casey sits up when Dan holds out the bottle of Gatorade, watches Dan while he drinks. "You getting sick? You look kind of weird."

"Coming from you right now, that's just horrifying." He thinks about bringing up his conversation with Isaac, but that's not how he wants this. Serious discussions about their future can wait until Casey can hold up his end. "I'm fine. You want me to hang around for a while?"

Casey's partway through nodding, when he remembers he's been brought up better than that, and says, "You got stuff to do? You don't have to stay."

It's Dan's turn to smile at him. "You do not even almost mean that. And this week, I need an internet connection and a computer. Both of which I have. I will continue to be your errand boy, and general manservant."

"That's good." Casey curls up under the covers. His face is grey, and, for half a second Dan wonders at what point they're approaching the danger zone, except that's a ridiculous thought he's not going to entertain. Casey's just got him spooked, is all, the way that crazy paranoid people are wont to do. "But only if you want to. I'm going to be less dazzling company than usual."

"You've been the most boring person in my life for about the last twenty years, Casey," Dan tells him, settling himself back down at the window where he conveniently left the laptop this morning. "I've gotten so used to it that it's almost tolerable."

"I hate you," Casey says, and there's absolutely no bite to the words.

"See. You're not even fun to make fun of, anymore. I'm going to write about you. The world deserves to know how very not capable you are."

"Probably on your blog," Casey says, and though the eyeroll lacks most of its usual force, he does at least attempt it. "I liked it better when you only wrote about sports." 

Dan grins at him. It's not like Casey wasn't the one who told him he could do something different, made fun of him until he got over himself and actually tried it. "You're so proud of me, it's a little embarrassing."

"You're...a little embarrassing."

Dan laughs, even though he really doesn't mean to. "I would point out how it demeans me to have such an inadequate sparring partner," he says, pretending not to be smiling, "but I'm busy. The masses await my guidance."

Then he settles in for the day. First, he really does update his blog, which is entirely different from a Twitter account, as he's explained many, many times to Casey, not least of all because his is on the NYT website, which is infinitely cooler. He finishes a post answering comments on the Giants' pre-season form that he's been working on since before Casey uprooted him. It might not be a blog just about sports anymore, but he figures the day he stops wanting to write about that, he'll give up writing completely. 

While he's doing that, Casey throws up a couple more times, though what he's throwing up is now a complete mystery to Dan. Dan hovers uselessly in the background. In between times, he opens his traditional six million tabs. He'd never realized, before, how much of being a writer involved reading stuff other people wrote, and how much there is: research studies and thoughtful opinion pieces, the kind of long-form journalism Isaac would want them to do, and so much that's factually wrong, it makes his head hurt.

"It's because they let any idiot have a blog," Casey says, when Dan complains out loud about it. Maybe not for the first time. "Tell me more about socialized medicine, and how if we had it, I'd already be dead. That sounds comforting." 

Dan looks over at him. He's slumped on the bed, the perfect picture of disconsolate. It's almost funny. The TV went on for about twenty minutes, until it apparently made his head hurt more. Even the copy of _The Inquirer_ Dan was forced to buy him--because when sick, Casey's reading habits are a lot like his eating ones--has defeated him. 

"If you laugh, I will kill you," Casey warns, no matter that Dan's pretty sure he didn't even come close to smiling. "Later, obviously, but it will happen. Also, you should be entertaining me. The word manservant was used."

"My life," Dan says, "so hard." Then he types some, and says, in as monotonous a voice as he can, "Plaxico Burress continues to be the most stupid man alive. The question currently troubling officials is how he survived this long without shooting himself before."

Casey laughs, and Dan reads him the real sports news seriously. He follows up with the actual news, to which Casey only half pays attention. Then he moves on to the comments on his blog entry, especially the most offensive ones, from angry Cowboys fans. Casey's too off his game to do trash talk well, but he gives it his best shot, and it passes a surprising amount of the afternoon; Dan only realizes it's time for dinner when his stomach starts protesting the lack of it. 

"If you bring food here," Casey says, "one of us will not survive it."

"I could not get that lucky," Dan says. But as he's on his way out the door, Casey says, "Thank you, Danny. I mean it."

Dan glances back at him, catches his expression, sincere and sweet, a little vulnerable. It makes him kind of stupid, for a second. Casey's been north for as long as Dan can remember, a thing that just is, like the hand at the end of his arm; no explanation necessary. But this is one of those weird moments when he really feels it, understands why. 

"I know," he says, and he does. "Wouldn't do it otherwise."

If Casey notices how Dan looks at him for a little while longer than is really necessary, he doesn't mention it.

***

When they finished _Sports Night_ , it was right. Not just because Isaac was retiring and Dana couldn't produce and do his job simultaneously; not just because they'd had three years of an awesome run, and there was nowhere to go but down. It was just time, and they both knew it, the way they knew when a segment wasn't working, or that the words they had weren't the ones they wanted. Dan was already writing occasional pieces for _The Atlantic_ , and an old college friend of Casey's had started badgering him to come work for his magazine. It was time, and it was right, and it was still the most terrifying thing Dan had done in years. It was the kind of terrifying he didn't even have words for, the kind that sat in his gut no matter what he did, and promised it was going to go right on sitting there.

"You and Casey are gonna be fine," Isaac had said, on their final day. He was moving slower and looking older, and struggling more, but he was still the smartest person Dan knew. "If you ever had the sense to actually talk to each other, you'd know he's doing as perfect a job of making himself miserable as you are."

"Good," Dan had said, and hugged him, hard. 

That had helped a little. Waking up every morning and realizing that however weird it was, he could get by without having everyone around him for twelve hours each day had, too; so had figuring out that Casey would call as much as Dan would, at any time, for any reason. It hadn't gotten rid of the fear completely, because Dan's record at getting to keep people he loved wasn't awesome, but then Casey had broken his arm in December, two weeks before he'd was supposed to move in to his new place, and the first thing he did was call Dan, high on whatever they'd given him for the pain.

"You have to come," he'd said, like Dan really might not. "Also, I really miss you, and I don't even care if I remember this conversation later. I picked out a room for you in my new place. Nobody else gets to use it." He'd paused for a few seconds, just static filling up the line. "That was supposed to be a surprise. Sorry. I wanted you to not, you know--we aren't friends because we worked together, Danny."

"Sure," Dan had said. "I don't even like you." But he'd been smiling, kind of hugely. It had probably looked goofy and extraordinarily sappy on his face, but he hadn't cared.

He'd picked Casey up from the hospital, and collected his keys to the new place, and helped him move in, and then stayed over Christmas and New Years to keep helping him do any number of ridiculous things, like wash his hair and shave and get undressed. Taking care of a sick Casey hadn't been anything new; since Dan had known him, being sick was the only thing that could make Casey's remarkably developed skills as a grownup desert him entirely. He'd been bleary-eyed from the medication, and cranky about being pretty much useless, and stupidly inclined to fall asleep on Dan as soon as Dan sat beside him for any length of time. But he'd also been serious about the room. It had been the first thing he showed him, pointing with his good hand and saying, "I meant what I said." His smile had been weirdly shy, a little embarrassed, a little more so when he said, "You ever want to make it more permanent, that's cool with me." Dan had hugged him then, and even though it had been awkward because of the cast on his arm, the hug had been right, too.

Casey still sometimes makes the same offer now, mostly in the middle of the night, when they're on the phone, sleepless and frustrated because one of them can't figure out an ending. Dan still rolls his eyes, and promises he'll be dead before suburbia gets him. But his room's still there, too, next to Charlie's and opposite Casey's. There are shirts in the closet and pajamas and underwear in the drawers, because it got increasingly stupid to keep borrowing Casey's whenever he stayed longer than he intended to. There are random accumulated books and pens and magazines on the desk, and there's a Yankees poster on the wall that Casey put up to annoy him, and which Dan left there to spite him.

It's a nice room to wake up in, especially in the summer, when the slanting window across from his bed ushers in all the sunlight there is, and outside it's very green, in a way that he isn't used to. It's nice, too, having Casey just across the hall; Dan doesn't even bother getting dressed before going to see him.

When he gets there, Casey's propped up in bed, shamelessly watching Fox News. He's still ridiculously pale, and he's coughing when Dan walks in, but if he's up to being enraged again by rightwing talking points, it can only be a good sign. And if Dan had been at all worried about him, which he obviously wasn't, it would be a comforting one, as well.

"You're just contributing to their viewing figures," Dan says, in what is only mostly fake disgust. "Which is a thing I will not give you a hard time for if you have a shower in the next ten minutes." He opens the blinds and then the windows, and not even just to comically emphasize how badly Casey needs to take his advice. "Actually, that isn't true at all. I'll totally give you a hard time for it. But you should still shower."

Casey blows his nose, and throws the balled up tissue at him, in the most tremendously ineffectual manner possible. "If I have to suffer, so should everyone else."

Dan laughs, nearly spilling the bottle of warm Gatorade he's opening. It turns out to be every bit as disgusting as he thought it would be, so he hands it to Casey, who has a bizarrely high tolerance for the stuff. "Believe me, Case, they do. They really, really do." 

Casey's answering grin is weak but real. "They kind of do," he says. "But it's part of my charm?"

"If by charm, you mean rapidly expanding neuroses, then yes, it definitely is." But while he's close enough to do it, he reaches out to check Casey's temperature. He's still clammy, but the fever seems to be gone. "I'm reasonably sure you're going to live. I'm so thrilled, I can't even tell you."

"You're about six seconds away from crying with happiness. I understand. If you could do that somewhere that wasn't right in front of the TV, though, that would be a welcome development."

"Uh huh," Dan says, stepping back and looking up at the screen with Casey. There's a whole lot of angry people at town hall meetings, and scrolling headlines about death panels and the government taking over the economy. It's really a terrible way to start the day, no matter what Casey says. "I really like it better when you just tell me this shit and I don't have to see it."

"Really?" Casey says. "And yet, you complain endlessly about it."

"And _yet_ , you continue to do it." 

"It's for your own good," Casey says. He believes very strongly in keeping track of the enemy, and he believes equally strongly in calling Dan up to tell him all about what the enemy is doing. And not in broad brushstrokes. Casey isn't a broad brushstrokes kind of guy, after all. Most of the time, Dan can have made dinner, eaten it, and started a crossword by the time he's done. And by then, Casey's talked all the anger out of his system, and Dan's just getting started. 

"It's probably all that rage that's made you sick," Dan says, and then, since Casey's too far away to hit him now, he adds, "People of your age have to be careful about that sort of thing." Casey tries to hit him anyway, and then settles for the time-honored middle finger. "Okay, before you push yourself too far, I'm going to grab breakfast. You want anything to go with your morning helping of darkness?"

"I think I could eat you," Casey says.

"Toast it is, then."

As he leaves, he swears Casey turns the volume up, so that the sound of Sean Hannity mourning the loss of the country he loves follows him down the stairs. Whatever country that is, Dan would be happy to lose it. While he fixes the toast and the coffee he puts the TV on in the living room, because now it's a thing. CNN has coverage of the healthcare bill, too; it's still pretty awful, but it's not quite so hyperbolic. Dan flips away to ESPN, ends up back on Fox. He flips away again, comes back. He takes Casey's breakfast to him; he eats his own, and barely tastes it, because Fox ruins everything.

He gets the laptop out while a group of guys hang around outside the meeting with baseball bats. There's an itch now, a column about August and summer craziness, and being better than all of it. Dan just doesn't have the words for it yet. He's gotten better about being patient when that happens, but old habits die hard, and after an hour of writing and deleting, and then writing and deleting some more, he admits defeat. At least this morning, Casey isn't on the other end of a phone. 

"There's a guy in a town hall meeting in Arlington saying we might as well just call ourselves North Korea and be done with it," he says, stretching out along the bottom of Casey's bed. He wriggles around until Casey takes the hint and moves his foot out of the way. "Do you think Kim Jong-il hates us because he thinks we're just stealing all his best ideas?"

"That seems an entirely reasonable idea," Casey says. "Also, you don't like that as a column opener."

Dan laughs. Can't not, really. "I don't."

"And not even because it's not very good."

"Nope." He tips his head back and looks out of the window at Casey's garden, the line of birch trees beyond it, and thinks. Casey waits, quiet. "Making fun is easy. Or at least, taking cheap shots is easy. I don't want to do that. I'm not--you know, I'm not Paul Krugman. I can't prove that it's better math. I have an exceptional knowledge of box scores, and a slightly-more-than-passing familiarity with senate procedures. But I still think this is a no-brainer. I don't want to make people who already agree with me laugh. I want the people who disagree with me to stop doing that." Casey snorts, and Dan looks over at him and grins. "Okay," he says. "I want them to at least hear what I'm saying."

He means something bigger than that--something about how he wants his words to amount to _more_ , but Casey probably gets that, anyway. He's smiling back, wan and tired and weirdly affectionate, in a way Dan's most used to seeing when he's drunk. "I think most people reading the op-ed pages of The Times already agree with you." Dan glares at him, and he smiles a little wider. "You already know the answer."

Dan sighs. "It's very cheesy," he says. "I might be forced to use words like 'the best versions of ourselves,' or some other horrifying cliche about how protecting each other is what makes us better. And when I'm done, I might have no choice but to end my life out of shame. Also, it's not new."

"So next week, write a column about whatever subject it is that you think has never been covered by anyone ever. And do it with awesome amounts of detached irony, if that'll make you feel better." He jabs his foot into Dan's ribs and rolls his eyes. "Idiot. Write this one the way you want to."

"You're not nearly as smart as you think you are," Dan says. Then he flops over onto his back, reaching down to pick up the laptop. "And just to be clear, there's totally a good joke in there about North Korea."

"In more skilled hands, I do not doubt it."

"You wish you had my hands," Dan says, not caring that it doesn't even make much sense. "Also, go shower, Jesus Christ."

"On one condition," Casey says. He doesn't wait for an answer before standing, a little unsteadily. "You tell me about the other thing when I get out."

"What other thing?" Dan asks, though he already knows.

"Dunno. That's why you're going to tell me. Whatever it is you've been all note-takey and weird about these last couple weeks. If it's my biography, I'm gonna want input, you know?"

"More like your eulogy, if I have anything to say about it," Dan says. He thinks about brushing it off, but it's not like he isn't going to tell Casey eventually, anyway. The only reason he hasn't so far is that He's always known what he's going to do. He just doesn't want to say it to Casey and make it real. "When I'm finished with this," he says, as a compromise. "It's not like we don't both have sharing to do."

Casey nods, not even bothering to deny it, and goes into the bathroom. Dan stares at the laptop screen for a while, and then he starts to write.

_In the interests of full disclosure, until a few years ago, I was the kind of guy who thought he knew about politics. Then I actually started to learn about politics, and, as those of you who read this column regularly know, it turns out I know nothing. I'm like the Roger Federer of the political world, if Roger Federer had taken up tennis in his late 20s and played with his eyes closed._

_Another thing I'm not very good at is people. My therapist could tell you just how bad (if she weren't legally prevented by the laws of confidentiality, that is), but trust me, sometimes I'm really not very good at all. I mention these things for the benefit of, and as an apology to, those readers who were hoping to enjoy this column. I'll try harder next week. This week, I thought it might be fun to tackle politics. And also, people._

***

Casey's office has a wall full of show tapes. There's other stuff in there, too--a desk and all Casey's work stuff, a guitar all Dan's teaching could not make Casey any less than God-awful with, and an old SEGA Megadrive they still like to mess around with sometimes, being the most important--but on the wall opposite the window, there's just shelves and shelves of _Sports Night_. It starts with actual videotapes; their first four and a half years marked out on those old-school cardboard sleeves, in Casey's serious, concentrating handwriting. Then it progresses to DVDs (Dan bought him his first recorder for Christmas, because, god knew, someone had to bring him into the twenty-first century), and Dan knows there's a little card inside each, with show numbers and dates. 

It's very awesome, and also very weird. Dan can never go in without stopping to look at them in all their psychotically ordered glory, and that's not even why he looks. They got through a lot of shows. Dan didn't tape and keep them, because he knew Casey would, but he likes the proof of it, how irrefutable it is when it's all right in front of him. They weren't all good years; but they were _theirs_ , and that's better.

"I'm gonna rewatch them all soon," Casey says, startling him from the doorway. "Marvel at how I only got more handsome with time."

Dan steps away from the shelves and over to the printer, inexplicably embarrassed to have been caught staring. It's not like he's the one with the wall of himself in his own study, after all. Casey's smiling at him, though, when Dan glances over. He's been doing that a lot all morning, and it's starting to be alarming. Especially because Dan is apparently programmed to smile right back at him.

"I think it's the way you've stopped doing anything approximating brushing your hair that does it," he says, as he collects the sheets from the printer.. 

Casey does look about a million times better since he showered and shaved, but they can't be out of the woods yet, or no way would that riotous thing be on top of his head right now.

"I was very weak," Casey says, running his hand through it. "I can't be sure, but I think it's because I threw up, you know, once or twice. I don't know if I mentioned."

"I wouldn't know, either. I wasn't listening." Dan sits down on the sofa, which is uncomfortable and threadbare and certainly no longer cream-colored. It's a relic of Casey's old apartment, and it's probably a relic of three or four apartments before that. Casey is peculiarly attached to it, for reasons defying human understanding..

"You hang on my every word," Casey says, coming over to ruffle his hair annoyingly. 

He walks away again before Dan gets a chance to retaliate, so Dan naturally pretends he's above even trying. "I disagree," he says. "Also, shut up. I'm reading." 

Dan holds up the pages as proof, along with Casey's favorite pen, the one that Dan always makes a point of stealing, just on principle. It earns him half a frown, and then Casey wanders around some more, looking out of the window and peering at his bookshelves, restless and generally inexplicable. Dan reads a line or two, and always ends up looking back at him.

"I liked it better when you were bed-ridden. In case you were wondering."

"Sorry," Casey says, finally sitting down in his very unnecessarily expensive desk chair. He spins himself around on it a couple of times, before thankfully booting up his computer. "I forgot you can't multitask. I'll just sit here quietly and try not to make things any harder for you."

Which, of course, he doesn't. He isn't any less random sitting still. He checks his email, and intermittently comments aloud, like, "I don't really think Charlie should be wearing that hat," and Dan has no choice but to go over and look. He also has no choice but to agree that Charlie really, really shouldn't be wearing that hat. Then he taps his keyboard while he's supposed to be reading, and then makes Dan listen to the same two paragraphs three different times, as he alternates their order--which would be annoying anyway, but Casey's voice starts to give out halfway through the first attempt, and by the end, Dan's just laughing and not paying any attention to the words. He goes back over and reads them himself, hanging over Casey's shoulder to do it. Casey leans back into him, and Dan gets briefly distracted pretending not to like the warm, clean, Casey smell of him. 

"The second way is better," he says, finally, "but you need to make that last sentence of the first paragraph stronger." Then he hands Casey a fresh copy of his column, which is almost certainly what Casey wanted all along. "You'll only critique it when it's published, anyway."

"Generally do," Casey agrees. The column settles him, makes his serious face appear. Dan spends a little while just watching him, the way his grip on his pen is kinda weird, and the way his face does all the talking Casey isn't--the corner of his mouth curving slightly when he's amused, his eyes narrowing, probably because he's found the comma splice Dan intentionally forgot to take out. Mostly, Dan just likes how Casey looks when he's doing this thing he loves, how uncomplicatedly relaxed and content he is.

When he's done, he looks up at Dan. "It occurs to me that while you have many, many failings, you do occasionally know how to string a sentence together." Then he grins at Dan, and comes over to sit beside him on the sofa. "I hope that comma splice was deliberate,," he says. "And your love of parenthetical statements is unnatural and needs to stop. I made some helpful suggestions to that end."

"Of course you did." Dan folds his legs onto the couch, feet pushing against Casey's side, and lets him list his objections. He takes the good ones, which means most of them. Not that he tells Casey that, obviously. 

"You're a butcher, is what you are," he says, but he lets Casey read it one more time before he sends it to Jo.

"You ever miss it?" Casey says, while he's writing the email. Dan's in the middle of explaining that all mistakes are decidedly Casey's responsibility, and he doesn't even look up to answer. He doesn't even need to wonder what Casey's asking about.

"Sure," he says. "We were a good team."

"Exactly!" That does make Dan look at him, eyebrows raised in expectation. "I just like it when you agree with me," Casey tells him. He proceeds not to elaborate at all, and Dan has to admit that Isaac might have been right to fear none of them would live to see Casey get to the point. 

Dan gives him at least a minute to do so, and when nothing else is forthcoming, he says, "Isaac says you want him to finance some kind of celebrity gossip magazine. I get the distinct impression you've fallen even farther in his estimation."

"Dude," Casey says. "I _knew_ he'd tell you that." He socks Dan in the arm, as if Isaac's betrayal is somehow his fault. "I had a speech planned and everything. It was going to be a triumph of the ordered list."

"I think that's what he was afraid of. It's certainly what _I_ was afraid of."

"You have no appreciation for fine oratory." Casey looks sideways at him, mouth quirked in a smile, eyes hopeful. "You want to?" he asks, sounding like he really doesn't know the answer.

"Not if it's a celebrity gossip magazine, no." He smiles at Casey, and it's probably another one of those very goofy ones. "If it's the kind of thing we've always talked about, and if Isaac really wants to, then, yeah. _Obviously_."

"Yes, on both counts. On the first, Isaac says we aren't allowed to have just white dudes writing about white dude stuff. On the second, I suspect it's because he heard you were involved, seeing how he likes you best."

"Isaac's a very smart man," Dan says. "Also on both counts."

"Whatever," Casey says. He's still smiling, but he stands up abruptly and starts heading for the door, turning back to Dan just as abruptly, almost like he's nervous. "How about we do this talking thing over dinner? I might even make you something."

"You don't have to do that," Dan says, and to his credit, his voice only conveys just a little bit how truly mental he thinks Casey is. "Thing number one, I'm not sure you're capable of it. And thing number two, I think you in the kitchen right now presents something of a health and safety risk." 

"Shut up," Casey says. "You'll get your dinner, and you'll like it." 

He's already walking out the door, and Dan follows him downstairs and into the kitchen without further argument, because, honestly, Casey's worst attempts at cooking are still guaranteed to be better than most things Dan could create. It's not even that Dan's particularly bad; it's just that Casey's annoyingly good. It's why he has this very awesome kitchen, and Dan half suspects that's why he chose this house out of all the millions he made Dan view with him against his will. It's huge, for one thing, big enough to hold every appliance Dan can possibly imagine needing, and a few that he really couldn't. 

Dan is generally a little frightened to use anything in it but the coffee maker and the microwave, at least when Casey isn't there. Tonight, though, he cuts up carrots and peppers while Casey does actual culinary things with onions and chicken and noodles, and cream and butter and other stuff Dan stops paying attention to. Every time Casey sneezes, Dan complains at length, but it smells so good that he'd probably eat it if Casey coughed a mouthful of all that horrifying phlegm he keeps telling Dan about in great detail into it.

"There's something very wrong with you," Casey says, as if telling him that wasn't a particularly flattering compliment. "I'm not even kidding." He carries the plates past Dan out into the garden--his own considerably less full than Dan's, because he can, on occasion, accept Dan's superior wisdom on all things--and Dan follows with the cutlery, a couple of beers and an orange juice.

"That's for you," he says, unloading it all onto the table. "Only the self-sufficient grownups get to drink beer."

Casey glares, but, for once, doesn't argue. They eat in silence for a while; Casey's too happy to be eating real food again to waste time with words, and Dan's just too happy to be eating _Casey's_ food. And that's fine, anyway. Better than. Somewhere along the way, it got real easy to be quiet with Casey. Right now, Dan's perfectly content. He's in the not entirely frequent position of having his column done a day early; it's still warm out; and he's watching the sun set with a cold beer in his hand, and his best friend across from him. As days go, it's on the right side of good.

When he turns to look at Casey, though, Casey isn't watching anything but Dan. He still looks weirdly focused on the task, and he doesn't even have the excuse of a fever to justify it anymore. 

"What?" Dan asks. "Are you just mesmerized by my awesomeness?"

Casey shrugs, ducks his head a little. "Nothing," he says. "You just look--you know. Happy."

It's Dan's turn to shrug, self-conscious now, too. "Better at that than I used to be, I think." He smiles at Casey, easy and real, because Casey's earned it. Put down ten years of earning it and never gave up on him. It makes a couple days hanging out here while Casey naps seem like not all that much, in comparison.

Casey smiles back, and he looks pretty happy himself. For a little while longer, they go on not saying anything else, and then Casey shifts in his chair. He pushes it back from the table; Dan moves his, too, so they're sitting closer together, because Casey's got his talking face on.

And sure enough, he clears his throat, and looks at Dan expectantly. "So. We had sharing to do. I already did some of mine, ergo, it's your turn."

Dan wonders what else Casey has left to say, but he lets it go. He pops the cap on his second beer, and swallows, before looking back at Casey. "Well, I'm not writing your autobiography. Sorry. It's not a big deal," he says. "Just an idea I've been kicking around for a little while."

"Which is?" Casey bumps his foot against Dan's when he doesn't get an answer right away. "Is it fan fiction?" he asks, finally. "Because Natalie's told me all about that. She could help you, if it is."

That surprises a laugh out of Dan, and that makes it easier to start talking. "I had this idea. A magazine piece, about mental illness in sports. Because, I mean, it's not a thing you're supposed to talk about, right? You can have drug addictions or be an alcoholic, because that's stuff guys do. But just be depressed? Or bipolar? Not so much, no."

"Sounds good," Casey says. "You'd knock it out of the park."

Dan peels the label off his bottle, one tiny strip at a time. "Thing is, it's just. I started thinking about it, like, really thinking about it, and I don't think it's a magazine piece. Not just that, anyway."

"A book." Casey isn't asking, but Dan nods anyway, and Casey looks pleased. "It's not like you couldn't do that. You've already got most of one written, in case you'd forgotten."

Dan nods again, then shakes his head. "That's a book about the things I love. New York and sports. It's not about me, you know? This wouldn't be that. It'd be different."

"Yeah," Casey says. "It's okay for it to be that. You know that." He doesn't say anything else. He pulls on a loose thread in his jeans and keeps watching Dan, waiting for him to get to whatever it is, the way he's always known how to.

"I just. It's not exactly a huge secret that I'm not what you'd call the picture of mental health. Hell, I disappeared for two months off the show. It was kind of hard to miss." He looks away, and Casey presses his knee against Dan's, a promise that he's there, just like he was back then. Dan looks over at him again, because Casey's earned that, too. "I just don't want it to be all I am," he says. 

In the quiet his words have fallen into, he laughs a little. "You can tell me I'm being irrational now, if you want. I'd probably appreciate it."

"You," Casey says, in response. His drink is halfway to his mouth and apparently forgotten about, and he's looking at Dan, like Dan's some spectacularly unexpected surprise. "Jesus, Dan. You're not--" He looks at Dan some more, a little helplessly, as if doing that might give him back his words.

"Your speech was gonna be better than this, right?"

Casey doesn't even almost laugh. He finally puts his drink back on the table, and says, "You're the best person I know, Dan." He sounds as serious as Dan's ever heard him, as certain. "You couldn't be just that if you tried. You couldn't write a book about you and--people couldn't not know."

Dan doesn't really have a suitable response, at least not one that doesn't make him sound like an idiot who's never learned a thing about the English language. So he goes with the obvious. "Thank you doesn't cover it. But thank you." His face is starting to hurt from smiling, though; he feels lit up, same way he always does whenever Casey gets sappy on him. "You're going to have to answer a lot of three in the morning calls with me freaking out. Just so you know."

"I can do that," Casey says, still serious. "Always." He takes a breath, like he wants to say something else, and then stays quiet.

Dan nudges him with his knee. "Do you want to do the rest of your sharing now? You were nice back then, so I even promise not to interrupt if you want to make a list." 

Casey still doesn't laugh. "I think," he says. He stands up and then sits back down; he rubs his hands on his jeans, and bites his lip. He's pretty much turning into one huge nervous tic before Dan's eyes. Dan doesn't get it, is, in fact, starting to get a little nervous himself, but he reaches out, puts his hand on Casey's leg to still it. That seems to help, because Casey starts talking again. 

"That's what my speech would've been. Only significantly longer. And less clear. But that would've been my point."

Dan's utterly bewildered. He opens his mouth to say so, but Casey shakes his head. "I don't invite you over when I'm sick so you can buy me food and watch me throw up. I invite you over because when I'm miserable, you're the only person I want there." He runs a hand through his hair; it's shaking, but his gaze is perfectly steady on Dan. "I've been kind of an idiot for the last ten years." he says. "I'd like to stop doing that, please."

Dan, for the second time, has no idea what to say, and to his horror, what he goes with is, "I've met you. It doesn't seem like a very realistic goal." It's stupid, but he feels a lot like some giant hand just reached down and gave the whole world a terrifyingly good shake. He's pretty much running on instinct while his brain catches up, and with Casey, smartass is as familiar as anything he knows.

It turns out to be the thing that makes Casey laugh again, anyway. "Jackass. I'm being sensitive here. Opening up to you." He reaches out, like he might be about to punch him again, but instead, he curls his hand around the back of Dan's neck, firm and warm. "If you wanted to. If you still wanted that, I want it, too."

"I," Dan says, and can't really think of anything else. He scuffs his toe along the ground and tries very hard not to notice the tension radiating from Casey. "It's not that I don't--but this isn't. When? It's kind of a, you know, surprise."

Somehow, that makes Casey laugh again. "The last couple of months, since I figured it out. Since approximately forever in actual terms. It's not a surprise," He says, squeezing Dan's shoulder. "It's really not, to anyone but us. We talk on the phone every day--more, sometimes. You're the first person I go to with anything important, and with anything that's not, too. I've kept all those tapes upstairs because it's _us_. I keep a fucking room in my house, just for you, because I keep hoping you'll change your mind about coming to stay with me. I like nothing more than watching you write--hell, just watching you figure out what to write." He stops, and he holds Dan's gaze, not a flicker of self-consciousness showing. "I can keep talking. I'll tell you every single huge clue I missed, if you want. But it's--Danny. It's not a surprise."

Dan doesn't say anything at first, just looks at Casey and worries a little about whether his heart can really keep beating at this speed. "Okay," Casey says. "When we finished the show, I didn't sleep--"

"Casey." Dan reaches up, touches the tips of his fingers to the back of Casey's hand. "I maybe do want to hear that list soon," he says. "And I'm thinking that there are all manner of practical problems with this. Where we'd live, just for starters." He looks at Casey, who's hopeful and nervous and somehow the least predictable person Dan knows right now. He thinks his brain might never catch up. He's okay with that. "Mostly, though, I'm very worried about what I'll catch if I actually kiss you."

Casey's smile breaks over his face like it might actually do it some damage, and he says, "It's totally not a big deal. A summer cold, really."

"Good to know," Dan says, and then he does kiss him. It's awkward, what with how the arm of Casey's chair is digging into Dan's side, but Casey's hands are on Dan's shoulders, and Casey's tongue is in his mouth, and all the words Dan's ever learned don't mean anything anymore. He hangs on to Casey, and that's weird, too, some crazy combination of holding what always grounds him and being tumbled out of reality. That's another thing he's probably okay with, especially when it turns out Casey really does have a very talented mouth. Dan thinks maybe he could spend the next several lifetimes just doing this, figuring out how to make Casey shiver against him just by using his teeth, letting Casey find out how much Dan loves something as simple as Casey's fingers curling under the collar of his shirt. 

Of course, they have to stop when Casey needs to cough, and that makes Dan laugh, until he's dizzy with it. It's not even that funny. It's just that his amazement has to come out somehow. He can't stop touching Casey, and God knows, he doesn't want to. And it's not like Casey is much for letting go, either. He's got a hand wrapped in Dan's shirt, coughing and laughing and trying to glare simultaneously. 

"Swear to God," Dan says, "looking like that, I'm starting to reconsider." But it's awesome. It makes it all significantly less terrifying than it should be, because this is just Casey; it's just them.

Casey leans into him, and says, as if he can read his mind, "If we wanted to bypass the freaking out and over-analyzing stage, we could maybe go inside."

"If by skip, you mean spend fifteen years before doing anything, then I believe we can, yes." Dan's already pulling Casey up before he's finished talking, gathering the dinner stuff as fast as he possibly can. 

"Pedant," Casey says, curling his free hand through Dan's beltloops and tugging him towards the house. "I deserve better."

"Uh huh." The plates get haphazardly deposited on the kitchen table, and they get in each other's way trying to get through the door and make out, a task made all the more difficult because Dan can't quite stop talking. "As I understand it, you got drunk and made Isaac agree to help us set up a magazine. Was that part of your wooing strategy? That's ridiculous. You're aware of that, right?"

Casey pushes him as they head into the hall, pulls him back in and nips at his jaw. "No," he says. "I wanted that whatever happened." He grins a little against Dan's mouth. "I just thought it might help."

"You didn't need it," Dan says, and that's another bit of weird right there, just laying it out for Casey, how much Dan's always been his. 

Casey wraps an arm around his shoulders, puts his forehead against Dan's. "Call it an apology, then."

"That wasn't needed, either." He tugs on Casey's hair. "Idiot," he says, softer than he meant to, before he kisses him again.

***

They go to Dan's room, once Casey gets them moving again. Dan isn't really thinking about anything but getting more of Casey, and he automatically heads in the opposite direction, towards Casey's much bigger one.

"I just spent three days being sweaty and generally gross in there," Casey says. "The hell we're having sex in that bed." He keeps a hand on Dan's back and steers him across the hall. "We should use this, anyway, before we turn it into something more awesome. Not like you'll need it anymore. I'm thinking a games room, by the way."

"I don't know what's worse--that you're being practical right now, or that I'm turned on by it," Dan says, squirming to get Casey's mouth some more. "It's possible we'll have the most loquacious foreplay in all the land."

Casey grins and pulls Dan down with him onto the unmade bed. He's already trying to kick his way out of his jeans, and Dan stops unbuttoning his own shirt to pay attention. He's seen Casey undress before countless times over the years, half glimpses of him while they frantically changed to make show deadlines, but he's never been allowed to just look the way he wanted before. Now, he does, openly enjoys how good he looks, his mouth swollen and his body laid out just for Dan. Casey stills, when he catches Dan watching, his jeans down far enough to expose only a few inches of hairy thighs.

"Dude, stop that." He's flushed, in a way that Dan possibly finds a little cute. "My porn star physique is nothing but a distant memory by now."

"To say nothing of fictional," Dan says, grinning. He pushes Casey until he's lying on the bed, slides a hand along Casey's belly, up under his t-shirt, and Casey's breath catches. "Looks pretty good from here," he says, and his voice sounds rough, even to his own ears.

He has plans to undress Casey, do it slow and kind of sexy. It's a thing he's generally very good at. He gets the jeans off without any problem, slides them down, slow inch by slow inch, making sure he gets to touch as much of Casey as he can while doing it. By the time he's finished, Casey's already a babbling mess, tense and shaky with want. Maybe that's why he has different ideas about the shirt.

"There's an inequality of nakedness here I do not like," he says, already tackling the buttons on his shirt himself. "You should be fixing that."

"I'm not going to enjoy doing this with you. I can tell." But he does as Casey asks, and when he looks back at Casey, he understands how Casey felt earlier. Casey's got his shirt held limply in his hand, and he's watching Dan in a way that makes heat prickle all over Dan's skin.

Casey reaches out to touch, fingers trailing down over his chest, kind of tentative and all the hotter for that. "I haven't--with a guy. Not in years," he says. "I might be a little rusty."

Dan kisses him to shut him up. It goes on for a very, very long time, and they both seem to be trying to outdo each other to see who can touch the most. Dan ends up underneath Casey, which is an altogether excellent place to be, and when Casey pulls back, it's very nearly the most terrible thing that's ever happened to him. He tries to sit up, but Casey puts a hand in the centre of his chest, leans down to kiss him again. 

"We might want to wait a little while for the--you know. The actual--" His face goes red again, and Dan laughs. Right up until Casey's other hand curls around his dick, strokes it firm and sure. "There's other stuff, though."

And just like that, he slides down Dan's body, shameless in a way Dan never expected, and flicks his tongue against the underside of Dan's dick. Dan's so surprised he arches off the bed, gets held down again by Casey's arm across his hips.

"You don't have to," he says, though his voice comes comes out so breathless and awed, it doesn't sound nearly as convincing as he wants it to. He clears his throat and tries again. "You're all--you know. Mucus-y and stuff. You'll probably choke to death. And that'd probably leave me with emotional scars."

Casey glares at him, circles his tongue around Danny's dick some more, probably just because he can. "You're use of logic in this situation is inexplicable to me. Also, kind of insulting." 

Dan's hold on any kind of thought is getting extremely tenuous. He'e opens his mouth to argue anyway, but Casey looks at him just for a second, and his eyes very clearly say that Dan should shut the hell up. And when Casey really goes to work on him, Dan can't do anything but that. It's possible he'll never remember how to speak again.

Casey goes slow with him, deliberate and certain, the way Casey does everything. The first time he takes Dan's dick in his mouth properly, he misjudges, has to slide back off, but he goes back to it, and because he's Casey, he makes sure he does it right. And does it right over and over again. Dan feels like his brain and maybe every part of him is being sucked out; he reaches down to get his hands on Casey, as much to touch him as to be able to hold onto something. It's the kind of pleasure his body isn't big enough to contain. Casey draws back every time he thinks he might be on the verge of coming, looking at him, smug and proud like he's maybe invented sex, and then he goes back to it again, until Dan is perfectly convinced he might actually die, and that he also wouldn't mind much.

When Casey finally lets him come, he doesn't pull away, even then, even though Dan feels like every bit of him is exiting his body. It's supremely messy, and Casey loses as much as he swallows, but when he looks at Dan, Dan figures he'd come all over again, if he weren't long past the age where that kind of turn around was possible.

"C'mere," he says, when he finally can. He tugs helplessly at Casey's shoulder. It's a good thing Casey wants to come to him, because Dan probably doesn't have the strength to push the issue. He slides up Dan's body, still touching every over-sensitized part of him, and Dan kisses the taste of himself out of Casey's mouth.

"Gonna make it up to you later," he says, and he means it. For now, though, he can only barely wrap his hand around Casey's dick. Casey covers it with his own hand, too, and together they finish him off. It doesn't take much work, a few rough strokes, and then Casey's saying Dan's name in a strangled, desperate voice Dan's never heard before, coming just as hard and messy as Dan did. He collapses in a sticky, boneless heap on top of Dan. It's pretty gross and fantastically awesome.

"I'm never moving again," Casey says, muffled against Dan's shoulder. As if it's an afterthought, he licks the bare skin there, too. Dan squirms and laughs beneath him.

"Works for me," Dan says. And for the most part, they don't, beyond some half-assed attempts to clean themselves up. They don't talk much either; even their touches are slow and lazy, figuring each other out without any of the urgency of before.

In the quiet, Dan keeps expecting to freak out--or if not him, then Casey. It's not like there isn't precedent, and it's not like this isn't a huge deal. But it keeps on not happening, and Casey keeps not leaving, keeps on showing no signs that this was all a terrible swine flu-influenced mistake he's already regretting.

"I got," Dan says, eventually. He swallows hard and tries again. If they're gonna do this thing, then they have to make it real. "Sarah invited me to her place on Saturday. You wanna come?"

Against his chest, Casey hmms agreeably. "As your date? You're totally bringing me as your date, aren't you?"

"That's probably not exactly how I'd describe it," he says, aiming for casual, and hitting it most of the way. "But--yeah. I guess so."

Casey doesn't hesitate before answering. "I'm good with that," he says, smiling. "I think that woman has designs on you, and I don't like it." And then, in that freaky way he has of knowing what Dan's thinking, he adds, "Gotta start somewhere, right?" He doesn't lift his head, but his voice is serious again. He's quiet for a little longer, and then he says, "You scared? Because I am, naturally, terrified."

"That's because you're a horrendous wuss." Dan curls his hand around Casey's hip, rubs his thumb back and forth. "I am," he says. "Because, I mean--of course, yeah. But I've done bad terrified before. This is the good kind." 

He shrugs a little, dislodging Casey and getting a retaliatory poke in the ribs for his trouble. Casey smoothes his hand out over Dan's chest, though. "Yeah," he says. He looks up at Dan and grins, sudden and bright in the pale light of the bedside lamp. "I think we might just have potential, Danny."

He props himself up so he can kiss Dan again, slow and sweet, like they've got all night for it. Dan tangles his fingers in his hair, content to do just that.


End file.
